The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is hosting an exhibit of a part of filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro’s horror-centric art collection. This includes everything from movie props (from his own films and others’), to paintings, to photographs, to sculptures, to storyboards, to sketches, etc, etc, etc. This small part of his collection is insane in the best of ways and any movie nerd that can should go and see it before it closes on the 27th of November.
As a proper movie (horror especially) nerd, I went and took a ton of photos. Unfortunately, it is dark in there and flash photography is not allowed to protect the art and other people’s enjoyment of it. With no further ado, here are some of my photos of the exhibit in all their dark and grainy glory!
I was never a big fan of Hellboy mainly because it was difficult to find. Here in the Bronx, any chances of ever reading it were futile. But I was a big fan of the original “Hellboy” movie as well as the two animated mid-quels that others found generally forgettable. The first film was Guillermo Del Toro playing Mike Mignola’s game, a veritable bevy of oddities and monsters confined to the modest budget of a studio who had very little faith on the power of this concept. “Hellboy II” however is Del Toro’s game, a movie that’s reliant on the imagination of Guillermo Del Toro who brought with him Oscar cred via the masterwork of “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
In a world filled with boy wizards, and dragons, every time I think the fantasy world is dead, there’s always someone who swoops in to reclaim the throne and show us that indeed the fantasy genre is still alive and well. All it needs is much imagination and no derivation. It’s not a hard concept to grasp, and it’s not a hard task to accomplish. Every time I receive an opposing argument on that declaration, two words will come from my lips: “Pan’s Labyrinth.” This would be the part where I’d compare this to fodder like “Legend,” and “Alice in Wonderland,” but Del Toro’s film is one of its own kind. Much like Del Toro’s previous “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” is unlike anything you can imagine watching.